ABSTRACT
No other branch of history or field of inquiry centered on historical events is so dependent on a definition as genocide studies. Studies of war, politics, wealth and poverty, society, culture, men and women, and a host of other topics have all given rise to detailed analysis of terms and definitions; but no other field depends for its very existence upon the invention and definition of a single term. Extermination, mass killings, and massacres were all well known long before the creation of the term “genocide,” but there was no field of historical study devoted to examining and comparing such massacres and killings from different historical epochs. Histories, whether of the Roman Empire, the Mongols, the Pennsylvania frontier, or the French Revolution, often discussed killings or massacres, but there was no field of history dedicated to massacres or mass killing as such.
